The Pre-Election Push To Delegitimize A Potential Obama Win

SIMON MALOY/media matters for america

It's obviously too early to know for certain, but on the final day of the 2012 presidential campaign  there seems to be a general consensus forming that President Obama is well-positioned to beat Mitt Romney at the polls tomorrow. And in the face of that prospect, some in the media are already beginning to challenge the legitimacy of Obama's reelection.

On November 4, Politico published an article enumerating the "lessons learned" from the 2012 campaign. Among them was the surprising assertion that the coalition Obama put together to win reelection -- "Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites" -- is insufficient to provide the incumbent the political capital he might otherwise enjoy were he to have the support of independents and white voters. "A broad mandate this is not," declared authors Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen.

Politico didn't explain why broad mandates rest on the shoulders of whites and independents, simply asserting instead that Obama, should he win, will win in a way that lacks legitimacy. Part of their analysis, however, rested on the myth that the United States is "a center-right country," which certainly helps to explain why they'd view an electoral coalition that excludes the center-right's top constituency -- white men -- as a political nonstarter.

While Politico went the route of demography, conservative pundits are instead opting for catastrophe. Specifically, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy, suggesting that Romney was poised to run away with the election until Sandy halted his "momentum" and gave Obama a boost in public opinion going into the campaign's final week. 

Karl Rove told the Washington Post: "If you hadn't had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the [Mitt] Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy. There was a stutter in the campaign. When you have attention drawn away to somewhere else, to something else, it is not to his [Romney's] advantage." He added: "Obama has temporarily been a bipartisan figure this week. He has been the comforter-in-chief and that helps." (Rove, who wheedled millions of dollars from wealthy conservatives with promises that his American Crossroads Super PAC would help take down Obama, obviously has an ulterior motive for pinning Obama's reelection on an exogenous event.)

Pundits like Joe Scarborough and Mark Halperin eagerly passed along and adopted Republican complaints that the storm had halted Romney's political ascendancy. GOP insiders like Haley Barbour all but creditedSandy with helping Obama across the finish line.

There was also a rush among conservatives to attack New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a Republican and Romney surrogate, for praising Obama's response to the storm and appearing with the president to discuss federal and state responses to the devastation. The Daily Caller's Matt Lewis wrote on October 31: "The question is whether -- with just days left before Election Day -- Christie should have gone out of his way to lavish praise on Obama, and to provide him with a terrific photo-op for which to look presidential."

The problems with this notion of Sandy saving Obama from Romney's relentless momentum are obvious. As theNew York Times' Nate Silver points out, by the time Sandy hit the east coast Obama "had already been rebounding in the polls, slowly but steadily, from his lows in early October -- in contrast to a common narrative in the news media that contended, without much evidence, that Mr. Romney still had the momentum in the race."

At a more basic level, the claim directly contradicts a longstanding conservative attack on Obama -- that he tends toward fecklessness and "leads from behind." One would think that the occasion of a devastating storm would serve to highlight that supposed lack of leadership. And yet, conservatives are complaining that the storm helped Obama by allowing him to be the national healer for a few days. Essentially, Obama doesn't demonstrate leadership, but when he does it's not fair.

This all fits into the four-year pattern of conservative assaults on the legitimacy of Obama's presidency -- from the undiluted toxicity of the birther movement to the many trumped-up "scandals" of Obama's first term to the claims that Obama won election in 2008 owing to insufficient "vetting" by the press. The possibility of a second term requires new rationalizations (like a patchwork coalition that isn't representative of the country, or a fortuitous disaster) to explain why Obama really doesn't belong in the Oval Office.

Sharpton: We cannot give up this basic right

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Obama's Endgame and Mitt Romney's Desperate Play

 by Deaniac83/The People's View

In the midst of total freakout in whiner-land and glee from conservatives who smelled blood in early October, the president's campaign kept on keepin' on. They kept calling voters, knocking on doors, getting the early vote out. This weekend, the Obama campaign reported a massive and unprecedented 125 million voter contacts, compared to a pittance of 50 million by Romney. All the final polls released now show the president with a significant lead in the battleground states, and while the images of long early voting lines and troubles are more than embarrassing for the world's greatest democracy, they upend the imaginary "enthusiasm-gap" that pundits think favor Romney.


The Romney campaign knows that it's President Obama who's expanding the map and has a very good chance of running the table on the swing states. He knows that as the president's campaign gets out unlikely, sporadic voters out in the swing states and methodically builds a lead going into election day, his paths to 270 are being closed fast. How fast?

 For Romney, just cutting the early-vote/absentee margin in key states might not be enough. Take Ohio, again – as both candidates would love to do. As the percentages now stand, Romney would have to win Election Day voting in Ohio by 10 percentage points to win the state outright,according to Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Obama.

Yep, Ohio is getting bluer by the day, and Mitt Romney knows it. To consider another example, in Iowa, President Obama is winning the early vote by a whopping 22 points.

Add to the president's massive ground operations and Mitt Romney's massive auto-lie fails, the pollsters' failure - previously pointed out here on TPV - to properly account for the energized and expanded Latino vote. Just as we are getting closer to the election, the mainstream is doing a little bit of CYA.

 It turns out it’s hard for pollsters to capture the opinions of America’s fastest growing minority group. So hard, according to one researcher in the field, that many polling outfits have misfired in their attempts to survey Latino voters in this year’s election.

Matt Barreto, founding principal at the research firm Latino Decisions and professor at the University of Washington, said on Thursday that his work has shown pollsters are often sloppy when they field a Latino sample.

Ya think?

Those of you who are regular readers of TPV know that I never believed in a big bounce for Romney's numbers after the first debate. Whatever wind the media's acquiescence to Mr. Romney's lying put in his sail was subsequently taken out by next three debates (one VP, two presidential), the president's incredible ground game, and the forward momentum of the Obama recovery as well as President Obama's calm, cool and collected ways of dealing with every crisis he has confronted - whether the economic crisis when he took office, the decision to swiftly take out bin Laden, or managing the response to a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy.


Mitt Romney's campaign is scared, and their candidate is desperate. They know that they're losing Ohio. They know Nevada is gone. They know Obama is making a comeback in Virginia. They know that their desperate ad lying about Jeep's production moving to China (which isn't happening) isn't working. They know Mitt Romney's wild swings from a severe conservative to a me-too moderate back to an angry white man isn't working. They have been reduced to being called out by iconic American auto makers, holding campaign rallies and calling them "storm relief events," and trying to run after fool's gold in Pennsylvania.

Conservatives are already preparing for Paul Ryan's next steps "in case" (read: when) the Romney-Ryan ticket loses the election, including whether a Palin-style quit might be in the works from Congress.

 Some of Ryan's biggest boosters are considering whether it wouldn't be better for Ryan to resign from the House. He could write a book — "saving America" is a theme often bandied about — or teach at a university.

As for Ryan himself? He's busy is making a last minute plea to theocrats and scaring them about how Obama might not be a Christian.


I have said before that Mitt Romney has a tell. A tell that tells you he knows he's losing. He runs around saying he's winning big. That's the tell. And right now, that is what he's doing. Running around telling everyone who will listen - which isn't that many people - that he's going to have a blowout tomorrow. And then, in Colbertesque fashion, he's going to build a better tomorrow, tomorrow.

But here is how things stand right now: the wind is on the president's back, but we gotta have his back until all the polls close everywhere. We gotta have faith, we gotta have his back, and we gotta pull this country through. We can do this. We will do this. This is it. Let's roll!

Michigan Democrats pursuing action against Michigan GOP over ‘fraudulent’ robocall

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

The Michigan Democratic Party announced Monday that it planned to file a complaint against the Michigan Republican Party and state Supreme Court candidate Colleen O’Brien over a “fraudulent” robocall that allegedly violated federal law.

The Michigan Democrats noted the automated message did not name the person responsible for the call or provide a telephone number as required by the Federal Communications Commission.

“Since the fraudulent robocall did not identify the organization that was responsible for the call as required by federal law, it’s difficult to say who ultimately wrote the check for the call,” Kirstin Alvanitakis, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Democratic Party, told Raw Story. “However, O’Brien and the Michigan Republican Party are the most likely suspects because they stood to gain the most from it.”

The O’Brien campaign later admitted that it was behind the robocall, but insisted the automated message complied with federal law. The robocall urged Democrats to vote for O’Brien.

“Hi, my name is Amanda and I’m calling today to ask our fellow Democrats to support Judge Colleen O’Brien for Michigan Supreme Court,” the automated message said. “Colleen O’Brien deserves our support. Remember the ‘O’ for O’Brien. Democrats should vote November 6 for Judge Colleen O’Brien for Michigan Supreme Court.”

Judicial positions in Michigan are non-partisan. However, O’Brien was nominated to the ballot by Republicans — not Democrats. Michigan Democrats nominated law professor Bridget McCormack, Southfield District Judge Shelia Johnson and Wayne County Judge Connie Kelley for the state’s Supreme Court.

Both parties have spent millions to support their state Supreme Court nominees this year.

Alvanitakis said another robocall targeting Democratic voters urged them to cast their ballot for all three Republican-backed Michigan Supreme Court candidates. The automated message, which claimed to be from a Democrat, also did not identify who was behind the call or provide a telephone number.

Scarborough repeatedly shouts ‘Benghazi!’ to block voter suppression talk

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Monday attempted to shut down any talk of voter suppression by shouting “Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!” over and over again to change the subject to the September attacks on Americans in Libya, a topic that Republicans believe hurts President Barack Obama.

During a discussion about the tight presidential race in Florida, co-host Mika Brzezinski attempted to point out that Republicans had restricted early voting, creating long lines and chaos for voters in some counties.

“You just feel like you have to finish with a story, Republicans bad, [Florida Gov.] Rick Scott bad, voting suppression,” Scarborough complained, throwing up his arms. “I have three words: Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi. I’m wandering around my ranch house muttering the words, ‘Benghazi.’ I mean, seriously, are we going here? Are we really going here?”

“But you know what?” Brzezinski attempted to continue. “We’ve had a…”

“Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!” Scarborough interrupted.

“It’s absolutely a story,” NBC’s David Gregory said of the long voter lines.

“Benghazi’s a story,” Scarborough quipped.

“It’s something we have to watch very carefully,” Gregory added. “And by the way, I think the Benghazi issue, I think there are real questions about Benghazi. There are serious questions… well, he brought it up!”

“Why do you want to cover up Benghazi?” Scarborough shouted, pointing at MSNBC.com executive editor Richard Wolffe. “Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!”

“Is the voter story I just read a story?” Brzezinski asked Republican strategist Steve Schmidt.

“Benghazi, Benghazi,” Scarborough muttered as Schmidt tried to answer.

“I mean, kind of,” the Republican strategist admitted. “Is it possible a local elections officials in Florida screwed up the early voting? Yes. Is it part of some big, giant Republican conspiracy out there? Absolutely not.”

“So what happened in Benghazi?” Scarborough said.

“I think we can all agree, Republicans and Democrats — whatever your preference — they all should be able to vote,” Wolffe explained. “Those lines are offensive wherever they are, whoever’s responsible. Lines should not happen for several hours just to allow people to do that.”

“I agree,” Scarborough replied. “Just like I agree that we really need to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi.”

Watch this video from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, broadcast Nov. 5, 2012.

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The Serious Flaw With Ohio’s Plan To Count Provisional Ballots

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

Thousands of Ohio voters have been falsely notified that they are not registered to vote due to a database error in Ohio’s voter rolls. An Ohio voter advocacy group alerted Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) to this major system problem on October 30. But instead of fixing it, Husted issued a directiveinstructing local boards to use the same flawed search method to count provisional ballots after Election Day.

Ohio’s computer search of the voter registration database will only find exact matches, meaning that voters could come up as unregistered due to typos, abbreviations, or partial entries. This flawed search mechanism missed huge numbers of registered voters in Franklin and Cuyahoga Counties, incorrectly rejecting 33,000 requests for absentee ballots. These two counties corrected the error, but thousands of others may have slipped through the cracks in the rest of the state. These voters were told they are not registered to vote and may be forced to use provisional ballots at the polls.

But if they do decide to file provisional ballots, along with a growing number of other legal voters in the state, the very same search method could disenfranchise their vote entirely. Husted has ignored warnings that the system is missing large numbers of registered voters. As the Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates, who first discovered the problem, explain:

Worse yet, Sec. Husted last night released a Directive with a proposed search method for Boards of Elections to verify registration status on provisional ballots. Yet Sec. Husted’s latest recommendations for search are entirely inadequate, likely to miss thousands of voters because of mis-spelling of names, variation in form of ID, failure to use all available tools for a reasonable search and other reasons. Once again, our warnings and suggestions, sent this morning, have gone unanswered. Unless this inadequacy is corrected, several thousand provisional ballots could be wrongfully rejected as “not registered.” If the election is close, this could be a source of endless legal battles.

NOVA has outlined an alternative, more accurate search method that will result in far fewer mistakes. Husted’s office has not yet responded.

Husted’s directive also jeopardizes legal ballots by shifting the burden of proof on the contested voter, even though Ohio law requires the poll worker to fill out the form. A federal judge will hear the case the morning after Election Day.

Why The Lines Are So Long In Florida And Ohio

By Judd Legum/Think Progress

There have been massive lines this weekend in the key swing states of Florida and Ohio, with some voters waiting six hours or more to cast their ballot.

This is not an accident. In Ohio, after attempting to cancel weekend early voting all together, Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) drastically rolled back early voting hours.

In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott (R) reduced the number of early voting days from 14 to 8.

Here is the result:

Columbus, Ohio

(via @finneganlatimes)

Cleveland, Ohio

(via @ariberman)

Cincinatti, Ohio

(via @DavidPepper)

Miami, Florida

(via AP)

Aventura, Florida

(via Daily Kos)

West Palm Beach, Florida

(Via The Palm Beach Post)

Wall Street Employees Think Banker Pay Would Increase Under Romney

By Pat Garofalo/Think Progress

Wall Street pay this year is expected to increase by up to 10 percent over 2011, according to the latest surveys. And Wall Street financiers think that number Mitt Romney would be even better for their compensation, as Bloomberg News reported:

A win by Mitt Romney in tomorrow’s U.S. presidential election is more likely to boost Wall Street compensation than if voters re-elect President Barack Obama, according to a survey conducted by eFinancialCareers.

The poll of 911 financial-market professionals found 57 percent expect the election to change compensation, while 32 percent said it won’t and 11 percent said they didn’t know, eFinancialCareers said in a statement.

Of those who expect the election to influence pay, 72 percent view a victory by Romney, a Republican, as having a “positive” effect on compensation, the survey found. Re- electing Obama, a Democrat, was viewed as positive for compensation by 18 percent and negative by 71 percent, the survey found.

Romney has vowed to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which includes measures aimed at reining in the bad pay incentives on Wall Street. It allows the Federal Reserve to veto pay packages that encourage risk that could lead to a new round of bank bailouts. It also allows for shareholder votes on pay packages; the first negative vote was handed to former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit.

High pay on Wall Street has exacerbated income inequality over the last several decades, and while bankers brought in higher and higher paychecks, they took on more and more risk, eventually culminating in a financial crisis. Now, even some Wall Street executives are pushing back against outsized pay packages. Morgan Stanley CEO acknowledged last month that Wall Street pay is “way too high.”

Random Friday:Assassin's Creed III for PS3: Launch Trailer

A Fitting Coda To The Gut Vs. Data Slap Fight

 SIMON MALOY/Media Matters for America:

After a week of comically inept warfare between the gut vs. data camps regarding the state of the 2012 race, Washington Post political writer Chris Cillizza takes stock of it all and declares a loser: polls.

Remember those golden days of this election season when a poll or two came out each week, and we political junkies pored over it with the glee of 5-year-olds at Christmas?
That joy has turned to ash in our mouths of late as each day is packed full of competing poll numbers that often seem to tell contradictory stories.
In the past week alone, at least nine polls have been released on where the presidential race stands in Ohio, and at least seven have come out in Virginia. A CBS News-Quinnipiac-New York Times poll in Virginia said that President Obama led by two points; in a Roanoke College survey, it was Mitt Romney by five. And the pollsters were in the field at the same time!
What all of that polling means is that partisans, who already live in a choose-your-own-political-reality world, can select the numbers that comply with their view of the race and pooh-pooh the data that suggest anything different.

Let's break this down. Cillizza's argument against the surfeit of polling data is that silly partisans can simply "select the numbers that comply with their view of the race and pooh-pooh the data that suggest anything different." True enough! But what is Chris Cilllizza's view of the race? Well, he thinks it's "tight as a tick," according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post national tracking poll showing a virtual tie. In keeping with that view, he looks this past week's glut of polling data from Virginia, selects two polls that suggest a tight-as-a-tick race, and blows off the rest of the data. Meanwhile, a look at the average of all the latest Virginia polling shows something different.
So in bemoaning the partisans who cherry-pick poll data that confirm their views of the race, pundit Chris Cillizza cherry-picked data that confirm his view of the race, and then awarded the data itself the winner of "the worst week in Washington."
Because it's the numbers that screwed up, not the people whose job it is to interpret them.

Obama makes final case for 2nd term

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7 Prognosticators With Good News for Nervous Obama Fans

—By Asawin Suebsaeng/Mother Jones

Freaking out about the supertight presidential race and the near-daily barrage of polls suggesting that Obama—no, wait, Romney—could, maybe, possibly, eke out a narrow victory? Sick of empty punditry and craving data-driven electoral analysis? Are you unafraid of mysterious nerdy things like math?
If you answered yes to any of the above, check out these seven guys who crunch mountains of polling data so you don't have to. They don't have crystal balls, but they might just have the next best thing.
1. Nate Silver
(Referring to this.) Nate Silver; quickmeme.comThe New York Times' statistics big shot has established himself as the gold standard for electoral prognostication. Romney fans are very upset with him for saying Obama has a strong chance of winning (and for being a sissy-man or something). Nail-biting Obama supporters hit his site for daily (or hourly) doses of reassurance. Both sides tend to ignore that Silver's model doesn't write off possibility of a Romney win.
Track record: Silver has built his reputation on the accuracy of his "Political Calculus": In 2008, his model correctly predicted the electoral outcome in 49 of 50 states, and long before the 2010 midterms, he forecasted a Republican sweep.
Current prediction: Silver's FiveThirtyEight gives the president a 77.4 percent chance of winning, with a estimated total of 299 electoral votes.

2. Sam Wang
Wang runs the Meta-Analysis model for the Princeton Election Consortium. Wang, who made a name for himself in neuroscience and biophysics, took the statistical analyses he'd applied in those fields and transposed them to the mess of electoral politics. He developed the model in 2004 initially to help predict the most strategic way to allocate of campaign donations. The model, based on a slew of state polls, calculates each candidate's probability of winning in the Electoral College if the election were held today.
Election.Princeton.eduTrack record: The group behind Meta-Analysis stakes out their election prediction street cred like so: "In 2004, the median decided-voter calculation captured the exact final outcome. In 2008, the final-week decided-voter calculation was within 1 electoral vote."
Current prediction: As of October 30, Wang gives Barack Obama a generous 92 to 98 percent chance of reelection, and an estimated 303 electoral votes.

3. Drew Linzer
Votamatic.org
Linzer, an assistant professor of political science at Emory University, runs the polling analysis and forecast site Votamatic.org. It tracks public opinion trends for the two presidential candidates in each state, and also "forecasts ahead to Election Day" using a unified model.
Track record: This is Linzer's model's first real election, but he vouches for its reliability. "I validated the model with state-level pre-election polls from the 2008 presidential campaign, using the benefit of hindsight to evaluate model performance," he writes. "In a simulated run-through of the campaign from May to November, the model was able to steadily improve the accuracy of its forecasts, ultimately mispredicting the winner of only a single state. By Election Day, the average difference between the model forecasts and the actual state election outcomes was just 1.4%, with more than half of states projected to within 1%."
Current prediction: As of October 30, Votamatic is predicting an Obama victory, with 332 electoral votes.

4. Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Electoral-Vote.comSince 2004, this noted computer scientist and professor at Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit has run Electoral-Vote.com, which analyzes US federal elections. Also, the site has the option of watching the election with "Rasmussen-free maps."
Track record: Click here for a self-evaluation and breakdown of the website's commendable track record since the 2004 election. Initially anonymous, Tanenbaum revealed his identity after rampant speculation that he was, among other things, "a Clinton administration official, [or] a bored retired statistician." Tanenbaum describes himself as "a libertarian [who leans] towards the Democrats."
Current prediction: With a week to go, Tanenbaum's analysis has Obama up with at least 280 electoral votes.

5. Josh Putnam
FHQPutnam, a visiting assistant professor of poli sci at Davidson College in North Carolina, runs the Frontloading HQ blog on state polls.
Track record: Putnam was an ace at delegate math during this year's particularly messy Republican primaries. (He teamed up with The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza to count delegates).
Current prediction: Putnam's model has Obama leading with 332 electoral votes.
6. Scott Elliott
Elliott (who goes by the nickname "The Blogging Caesar") runs the Republican-leaning ElectionProjection.com, a site featuring his electoral vote formula and his own edition of "unskewing" the polls. He is a conservative political junkie who views "Jesus [as] my life and my purpose."
ElectionProjection.com
Track record: His track record and methods have been pretty solid—even winning him an endorsement across the aisle from Prof. Tanenbaum at Electoral-Vote.com: For instance, in 2008, his formula projected an easy Obama win, but was off by two states (Indiana and North Carolina). In 2004, his model predicted Bush netting 289 electoral votes (he ended up with 286). 
Current prediction: His math shows a substantial lead for Obama, clocking in at 290 electoral votes, but with 48.9 percent of the popular vote versus Romney's 49.6 percent.

7. Thomas Holbrook
Research.UVU.edu
Holbrook, a professor of government at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, runs the Politics by the Numbers forecast.
Track record: He took his models out for their first spin during the 2008 election, estimating a big Obama win with 349 electoral votes, to McCain's 189 (Obama snagged 365, McCain 173).
Current prediction: Holbrook gives the president an 86.69 percent chance of winning reelection, with 281 electoral votes to Romney's 257.

Michele Bachmann Outspends Opponent Jim Graves 12-To-1, Still At Risk Of Losing

By David Bailey/Reuters

ST. CLOUD, Minn., Nov 2 (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann, known for controversial comments during her Republican presidential nomination bid, faces a tough congressional election challenge on Tuesday in a Minnesota district that should be friendly to conservatives.

The race in the sprawling Minnesota 6th Congressional District has been the nation's most expensive in both money raised and spent by Bachmann and Democratic challenger Jim Graves, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The two candidates have raised a total of $22.7 million and spent $20.8, the center reported.

Bachmann, a champion of Tea Party backers of smaller government and conservative social issues such as opposition to abortion and gay rights, has outspent Graves by more than twelve-to-one in seeking election to a fourth term in Congress.

But her remarks, including an insistence on a link between an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Muslim Brotherhood, have been denounced by some in her own party and may be wearing on voters, experts said.

Defeating Bachmann would be a significant victory for Democrats, who are fighting an uphill battle nationally to gain the 25 seats needed to retake the U.S. House majority.

Her opponent lacks name recognition, but has used Bachmann's presidential campaigning for half of her two-year congressional term to accuse her of pursing personal ambition over the needs of her constituents.

"When she was running for president, her attention was clearly not on district concerns and I think that perception stuck with some voters and it is a vulnerability that Graves is trying to exploit," Carleton College political science Professor Steven Schier said in a telephone interview.

Bachmann led Graves by 51 percent to 45 percent in an Oct. 16 poll by Pulse Opinion Research commissioned by the StarTribune newspaper. The poll had a 3 percent margin of error.

Bachmann has sought to tag Graves, founder of the AmericInn hotel chain, as a supporter of President Barack Obama's health reform law. Graves, who describes himself as a fiscal conservative, has argued that "there are some good things" in the act, but "the heavy lifting has not begun."

"You can have your opinions, but you can't have your facts on this one," Graves said during a debate on Tuesday.


MONEY MACHINE

A formidable fundraiser, Bachmann had nearly $3.3 million cash on hand on Oct. 17, compared to Graves' $471,311, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Bachmann said several times during the debate in St. Cloud that she was focused on the district, echoing her campaign ads.

"I have paid attention and I have delivered for this district," Bachmann said in the debate. "I know what the pulse is of this district because I am here nearly every weekend."

District voters said job creation was their top concern, as it has been nationally, whether they support Bachmann or Graves.

"The number one thing, we have got to get people working," said Matt Salo, who has voted Republican in the past and describes himself as a conservative.

Jeff Johnson, who said he worked 22 years at the Verso Paper Corp. plant in Sartell and had recently completed training as a truck driver, was one of dozens of vocal Graves supporters at the debate. "He is in touch with the people," Johnson said of Graves. "Michele Bachmann is out there."

The district encompasses eastern, northern and western suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul and stretches north and west to central Minnesota farms and cities. The already conservative district grew more Republican after a 2010 redistricting, analysts have said.

"This is a district that should be a safe Republican district, but Michele Bachmann has never been safe in that district and I think it is because she is so flamboyant and controversial a figure," Schier said of Carleton College.

Bachmann has never won more than 53 percent of the vote in the 6th district and won by only 3 percentage points in the last presidential election year of 2008.

Hamline University Professor David Schultz said Bachmann may have alienated some constituents when she embraced her Iowa roots during the presidential campaign, making the race more competitive, but he still expected her to win reelection.

"I still think she has the district to her advantage. She has the name recognition and she is a money machine," Schultz said. "She is able to raise phenomenal amounts of money."

Jerry Relph, a Bachmann supporter from St. Cloud, said he believed it was "disrespectful" for Graves to say Bachmann had not been a part of the district. "I don't know how anyone with that attitude can reach across any party line if that is what he is claiming to do," Relph said.

In First 45 Months In Office, Obama Created 750,000 Private Sector Jobs, Bush Lost More Than One Million

 By Pat Garofalo and Adam Peck/Think Progress

Today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the economy added 171,000 jobs last month, beating analysts’ expectations. The private sector added 184,000 jobs (offset by some public sector losses), making this the 32nd consecutive month that the private sector has grown.
Overall, even accounting for the horrific month for jobs that was January 2009, the private sector has added 759,000 jobs overall under Obama. At this same point in the George W. Bush administration — October 2004 — the private sector had lost more than 1 million jobs. This chart shows the difference:
During the entirety of the Bush administration, the private sector ended up losing nearly 650,000 jobs.
The only reason that the unemployment rate did not spike during Bush’s first term is that the public sector so derided by conservatives was rapidly adding jobs. If the public sector had added jobs at the historical pace under Obama, rather than hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of jobs, the unemployment rate would be under 7 percent today.

New Details Discredit Fox News Reports On Benghazi Attacks

 By Hayes Brown/Think Progress

A slew of new reporting this morning debunks Fox News reports claiming that the Obama administration withheld assistance during the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya. With these revelations, the combined conservative narrative as led by Fox News — that the Obama administration failed to respond adequately during the attack and that mainstream media has not covered Benghazi enough — is in further disarray.
The Los Angeles Times’ version of the CIA’s role focuses the most heavily on pushing back on Fox’s spin:

“At every level in the chain of command, from the senior officers in Libya to the most senior officials in Washington, everyone was fully engaged in trying to provide whatever help they could,” a senior intelligence official said in a statement. “There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support.”

Fox reporter Jennifer Griffin claimed in an “exclusive” report last week that the CIA denied Tyrone Woods, one of the four Americans killed in the attack, permission to help repel the assault. Griffin’s reporting spun off into a bevy of conspiracy theories on the far right. The Pentagon, White House, and CIA had all previously denied refusing requests for support. The New York Times reports on the Pentagon’s involvement:

[A] senior official also sought to rebut reports that C.I.A. requests for support from the Pentagon that night had gone unheeded.
In fact, the official said, the military diverted a Predator drone from a reconnaissance mission in Darnah, 90 miles away, in time to oversee the mission’s evacuation. The two commandos, based at the embassy in Tripoli, joined the reinforcements. And a military transport plane flew the wounded Americans and Mr. Stevens’s body out of Libya.

The new reports also contain previously unreported details about the CIA’s role in Benghazi. President Obama and Secretary of Defense Panetta did order U.S. forces into the region, but the CIA was the first to respond to the attack, arriving on the scene in under half an hour.
The lack of security at the outpost in Benghazi, far removed from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, has been the subject of inquiry by both Fox News and Congressional Republicans. The Wall Street Journal sheds new light onto why that was the case. The CIA and State Department had entered into a series of secret deals in which the Agency would provide emergency security to the diplomats operating within Libya.
While the State Department primarily relied upon local Libyan militias for day-to-day protection, as well as contracted British private security, the arrangement between it and the CIA explains why the outpost seemed under-protected. The revelation also will prompt a renewed look at the State Department’s decisions to remove Department of Defense-provided security from the Embassy in Tripoli, which were highly scrutinized during Rep. Darrel Issa’s hearings.
The primary role of the CIA was intelligence gathering and covert operations within Benghazi. Agents there operated out of an annex originally reported to be an offshoot of the diplomatic mission, revealed officially — and accidentally — during Issa’s highly politicized hearing into the Benghazi attacks. The Agency’s large presence may also help explain why the diplomatic compound was open to journalists and looters for weeks after the attack, as more vital intelligence documents were collected.
Washington Post’s David Ignatius has gone as far as to produce a detailed minute-by-minute timeline, of the events that night. These reports together give the clearest picture yet of the events in Benghazi. Rather than the Obama Presidency unraveling as the news organization has claimed, it appears to be Fox News’ narrative that is coming undone instead.

Volunteers For Voter Suppression Group Installed As Election Officials In Ohio

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

Conservative poll observers are gearing up for Election Day, when they will watch for possible instances of voter fraud and challenge voters they find suspicious. As ThinkProgress reported, many of these volunteers have been fed false or misleading information about voting rights by the Romney campaign and independent Tea Party groups like True the Vote. True the Vote encourages its poll watchers to “build relationships with election administrators” because “they control the access to the vote.”
But one True the Vote affiliate, the Ohio Voter Integrity Project, is taking their election interference one step further. Ohio VIP has recruited and dispatched poll workers who will not be merely observing, but directly involved in the voting process in a crucial swing state. Hamilton County elections director Tim Burke told the Columbus Dispatch that VIP poll workers will represent the Republican Party:

We know that the Voter Integrity Project has recruited and through the (Hamilton) County Republican Party has placed some poll workers. I have discussed this with my Republican counterpart.
I accept the fact that he understands that the VIP pollworkers are working for the Board of Elections on Election Day and are subject to the board’s instructions, not the VIP instruction. Obviously both sides are going to have observers as well as poll workers. I, and others will spend the day responding to trouble calls.

Ohio VIP provides a 3 hour training for their poll workers, as required by the Board of Elections. The group is advertising these sessions, according to the Dispatch, “as going beyond what the secretary of state tells them.” Ohio VIP is one of the more zealous branches of the already extreme True the Vote national organization; Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) opened a criminal investigation into True the Vote due to the Ohio group’s attempts to purge thousands of students, trailer park residents, homeless people and African Americans from the voting rolls.
While in-person voter fraud is exceedingly rare, overzealous poll workers could jeopardize legitimate votes by forcing them to use provisional ballots, which cannot be counted until November 17. Ohio’s provisional ballot mess is already threatening to disenfranchise thousands of legitimate voters — the bulk of whom live in urban, minority-heavy areas like Hamilton County, which contains Cincinnati. In 2004, Ohio tossed out thousands of provisional ballots, concentrated in Hamilton and the state’s four other urban counties. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) lost Ohio by a narrow margin in 2004, allowing George W. Bush to win a second term.

Happy Halloween movie: Dead Set

For Hannity, Benghazi Seven Weeks Later Is A Bigger News Story Than Sandy's Epic Devastation

 ERIC BOEHLERT/Media Matters for America

Broadcasting from Fox News' studio in New York City last night, which is just beginning to recover from perhaps its worst natural disaster in the city's history, and certainly the worst physical pounding the metropolitan area has taken in the modern era ("unthinkable"), Sean Hannity devoted much of his show to rehashing phony allegations about the government's response to a terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya seven weeks ago.
The program's bizarre focus on an already denied, anti-Obama conspiracy theory, and how that misinformation trumped the stunning and historic damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, only highlighted the lengths to which Fox News will go to bash Obama during the election's final week
It was especially callous for Hannity to broadcast yet another endless Benghazi fantasy program from Fox's headquarters in Manhattan, given that parts of the island were still underwater at the time of his show, its infrastructure suffered egregious damage (not to mention the loss of human life), and nearly one million people were still without power.
It was against that backdrop of epic human suffering and property destruction that Hannity last night turned his attention to a seven-week-old story out of Libya. His performance represented pure Obama Derangement Syndrome.
After Fox reporter Jamie Colby did a straight report detailing the Sandy destruction, Hannity immediately began politicizing the topic by attacking Al Gore for his comments about climate change, and bemoaning "an Obama email" sent out "during the hurricane." Hannity also belittled liberals who (supposedly) want the government to "babysit" people during a storm.
Then Hannity and guest Dana Perino complained that a government press release in advance of the storm included the phrase "lean forward," which they claimed was meant to echo Obama's own campaign rhetoric. But remember, Hannity last night insisted he didn't want to "politicize" the story.
In truth, Hannity couldn't move fast enough to dismiss the topic of Sandy in order to start peddling his latest conspiracy theories about Benghazi, where four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, were killed:

HANNITY: I think the biggest story that we need to get to the bottom of -- I mean, I want to take care of all the storm victims. They deserve our help and support. And they're in our prayers. I mean, a lot of people lost their homes, people lost their lives. I don't want to politicize that in any way. But I do want to get answers to this. Obama -- he's bragging, spiking the football, he got bin Laden, even though he didn't support the intelligence policies that gave us the opportunity to get him. But that's a side note.
JUAN WILLIAMS: He didn't support torture.
HANNITY: Wait a minute! The -- Obama called the Navy SEALs. They got bin Laden. The Navy SEALs, we now discovered, during this Benghazi attack -- the ambassador asked for help beforehand. They asked for help while they were being under attack. We know that -- we had Ty Wood's father on this program last night. He literally defied orders to go save 30 American lives and gave his life for his country and was told to stand down! Where was Obama when the SEALs called him requesting help? I want an answer before the election! I want to hear those tapes. I want America to see those tapes before Election Day!

And with that, approximately ten minutes into his show, the once-in-a-century hurricane that had flattened portions of the largest metropolitan area in America was off the table. Hannity did not return to it, in any meaningful way, for the rest of his program.
Instead, Hannity pushed fantastic right-wing claims about how the Benghazi 'cover-up' was worse than Watergate, how Obama's top officials watched "in real time" as Americans at the Libyan consulate begged for help, only to have their desperate pleas turned down by the White House, and how Obama "two weeks later" was denying it was a terrorist attack.

Romney campaign keeps driving Jeep lie

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Obama leads by 8 in Michigan

From PPP

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Michigan, conducted on behalf of Health Care for America Now, finds Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney 53-45. Although there has been a lot of talk recently about Romney having the chance to pull off an upset in the state, these numbers indicate that possibility is quite a long shot
Key findings from the survey include:
-An outright majority of Michigan voters approve of Obama’s performance as President with 52% giving him good marks to 46% who disapprove. Romney is not a popular figure in his native state with only 46% of voters rating him favorably to 49% with an unfavorable opinion.
-Obama is leading thanks to wide advantages with women (60/38), African Americans (86/8), and voters under 65 (55/42). Romney is ahead with men (53/44), whites (50/48), and seniors (53/45), but he’d need much wider margins with those groups to have any hope of winning Michigan.
-Obama has wide advantages over Romney in terms of who voters trust more to stand up for the middle class (55/42) and protect Medicare (52/44). Romney’s inability to convince regular people that he would be an advocate for them makes it very difficult for him to compete in a state like Michigan.
Full results here